Monday July 11, 2016

New research into almost six hundred playable female video game characters shows that sexualization in games has been on the decline since 1995, despite what critics have recently been squawking about. The study concludes that there is still work to do but the situation is no where near the epidemic level some would have you believe. Also, just so you know, there is no relation between the lead researcher and myself.

Lynch and researchers Jessica E. Tompkins, Irene I. van Driel, and Niki Fritz studied the portrayal of 571 playable female characters from 1989 to 2014 and found that, on the whole, things have actually been getting better. According to their findings, sexualization in video games reached a peak in 1995 and has since declined save for a few notable spikes (including a massive one in 2012). According to Lynch, this points to "a pattern of change in sexualization over time that indicates the industry may be reacting to its critics."